


Truce

by Jaelijn



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Episode Related, Episode Style, Episode: s01e08 Duel, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre-Slash, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-24
Updated: 2016-03-24
Packaged: 2018-05-28 19:23:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6341953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaelijn/pseuds/Jaelijn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Avon and Vila are sent down to Losteana Secunda to investigate a supposed secret Federation facility – not that Vila has any say in the matter, or is given a chance to have that much needed chat with Avon before teleporting down. And of course nothing goes according to plan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Truce

**Author's Note:**

  * For [atomicmayo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/atomicmayo/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Where does it hurt? (Art)](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/184582) by atomicmayo. 



> Here we go, the first _Blake's 7_ fic I managed to finish. Avon  & Vila seem to have taken over the entirity of my creative energy, and I could never resist a bit of h/c - and it spiralled from there. 
> 
> This is based entirely on [this lovely piece of art](http://drawing-blog-of-fun.tumblr.com/post/141533609410/where-does-it-hurt), and wouldn't have happened without it, so of course I am gifting it to the artist. Hope you like it!  
> And for those interested in more, [here is a fic by bruinhilda on tumblr](http://bruinhilda.tumblr.com/post/141535179875/drawing-blog-of-fun-where-does-it-hurt) who beat me to it, also based on the art. Check it out!
> 
> I imagine this taking place somewhere shortly after "Duel", definitely before "Killer", though I'm probably putting it in between "Duel" and "Breakdown" in my personal Avon/Vila timeline. Nothing really explicitely A/V-y happens, so you're perfectly welcome to read a variety of pairings into it beyond the Avon&Vila friendship, though I am dropping a few hints that way. ;)
> 
> And now, without further ado, enjoy!

On reflection, they had been the best people for the job, not that either of them would admit that, least of all to Blake. Vila hadn’t wanted to go – he never liked going down onto planets, but he liked it even less when it was a planet with a reputation, and for none of the good things. Vila had dreams – dreams about one day seeing Space City, or even visiting Freedom City. The places of pleasure, where any vice could be indulged and where money changed hands freely. Think of a pleasure, any pleasure…

 _Nothing_ like this place. Lostea Secunda had one of the most stuck up, old-fashioned, prim and proper societies in the galaxy. The Federation hadn’t even been interested in taking them over because the Losteana were even _worse_ , if one asked Vila, which no one ever did. Anything fun was a crime, unless it was government-approved, and very few things were: a bit of art, a bit of music, a certain style of dress. Certainly no gambling, or any games of luck, or even a nice drink or delicious food. There was no such thing as being able to like and love whoever you wanted – they didn’t even allow equality for women! The slightest misstep, the slightest social faux pas could be considered a crime, and any crime was punishable by hanging, no questions asked. Vila wasn’t sure how the population even survived. It sounded like hell.

And Blake was sending _them_ – Vila, who, if Avon was to be believed, never had any manners to begin with (and if it got him out of going down, Vila was inclined to agree with anything Avon said), and Avon, who might be an Alpha, but who couldn’t behave himself if things didn’t go his way even if his life depended on it, Vila would have said, or, as Avon phrased it, wasn’t _a diplomat, Blake!_ But Blake couldn’t be argued with. They weren’t even supposed to interact with the populace, he said. He was adamant that they needed to see if the supposed secret Federation facility _really_ was a secret Federation facility, and if it was, to find out what the Federation was doing there and to destroy it if it was anything bad. Neither Vila nor Avon bothered to mention that _of course_ it would be. Blake couldn’t send Cally or Jenna, for the obvious reasons, and Gan’s limiter might be noticed. As for why Blake wasn’t going – “A small party will attract less attention. Vila needs to go down to open any locked doors, and I need you down there to read the computers, Avon.”

And so, under protest, the matter was settled. They found the closest possible approximation to the Losteanar plain clothes in the _Liberator_ ’s stores – the grey shirt picked out for Vila was surprisingly comfortable, but then it wasn’t _actual_ Losteanar dress, so it was a small comfort as Vila clipped his teleport bracelet high around his forearm and pulled the sleeve down over it. Whine-red didn’t go well with Avon’s scowl either.

It wasn’t that Vila minded going down with _Avon_ , of all people – at least Avon wasn’t going to go charging headlong into a Federation patrol – if it hadn’t been for their… argument. Vila had been feeling a bit frustrated, a bit lonely, and Gan was nice and protective – really, Vila loved being around the man – but Gan was also so very _simple_. And so Vila had, in a fit of bravery or insanity, gone to Avon. He expected Avon to perhaps scoff and laugh at him, call him a Delta fool, and Vila could have coped with that, but Avon’s stare had gone cold and hard, and he had said: “What makes you think I would trust _you_ anywhere near me?”

And Vila, feeling taken aback and vaguely insulted, had called him a callous machine, and had never meant an insult more. For some inane reason, though, it had tickled Avon’s unpredictable sense of humour, and no matter how often Vila repeated the dig, it never seemed to have the desired effect on Avon – to Vila’s great frustration. Then, after the incident with Sinofar, Vila figured out what Avon had meant – it wasn’t that Avon didn’t have the ability to care, Avon simply didn’t _trust_ , not anyone, probably not even himself.

Vila had spent so many years in and out of prisons and correction facilities to cultivate an image of trustworthy harmlessness that it was unsettling to meet someone who wasn’t taken in, especially if it wasn’t because of anything Vila had done wrong. He was sure that even _Blake_ , who seemed to think he was a good judge of people, had been taken in and considered Vila somewhat useful, nice perhaps, but largely a non-threatening coward. Vila had no idea what Avon was thinking of him, _really_ thinking, beyond the general arrogance about his supposedly superior skills and mind. So much of Avon was just talk, and if he _didn’t_ think of Vila as just a harmless fellow, well… Admittedly, Vila perhaps shouldn’t have offered to play chess with him, back on the _London_. Trust Avon to notice something as small as that.

At any rate, Vila was sure he could come to an understanding with Avon – if he didn’t let on what he had figured out about Vila, Vila would keep his mouth shut about what he understood about Avon – but Vila simply hadn’t yet had a chance to negotiate that truce.

Miserably, he moved onto the teleport platform. “Let’s get on with it, then.”

“So eager, Vila?” Avon smirked darkly, and moved to stand beside him, adjusting his sleeve to fall over the bracelet.

They couldn’t bring any weapons, of course – they would have been far too obviously foreign. The only thing they could carry, apart from the bracelets, was a slim, rolled up tool case made of cloth each, hidden away under their vests, which contained an assortment of probes and lock picks. Vila usually felt safer with his tools, but not when he was about to be send down into hell.

He glared at Blake who was operating the teleport. “Just put us down already!”

With a faint sound and a tickle on Vila’s skin, Blake and the teleport room vanished from view, only to be replaced moments later by a side street that looked far too clean and bright to be any such thing. There were even well tended flowers on the narrow windowsills.

“I’m going to be sick,” he whispered, trying to find the safety of shadows that simply weren’t there. Blake had put them down not far from the building they suspected housed the facility, if it was real, and they had waited until it was early evening to avoid the crowds. They would have gone at night, but the Losteana enforced a strict curfew with unpleasantries such as an army of guard robots.      

Avon waited to make sure there was no one about, then raised his bracelet to his lips. “Blake.”

“I hear you, Avon.”

“Down and safe – we’ll call in again when it’s done. Oh, and Blake – no heroic rescues this time.” A nasty smile curled Avon’s lips and Vila shuddered. “By the time you notice we have gone missing, we’ll be dead already.”

“Understood. Be safe.”

Avon dropped his arm, looking briefly disgusted, then turned to Vila with a raised eyebrow. “Well?”

“You couldn’t have mentioned that while we were still on the _Liberator_ , could you?”

“Do you think that would have dissuaded Blake? If anything, _he_ would have insisted on coming. We stand a better chance.”

“Oh yes, the embezzler and the thief,” Vila whispered, fighting down his panic. “We’ll fit right in here!”

To his horror, Avon just grinned. “Come now, Vila – all you have to do is look the harmless fool. That shouldn’t be too difficult for you.” And with that, he stepped out into the main street, arms hanging loosely by his side.

Vila tried to make it appear as if he were _not_ hurrying after him, and fell in step with Avon.

He had sneaked into the Alpha section of the domes more than once, and he had always thought _those_ were disgustingly clean, but they were nothing in comparison to this place. At least in the domes, there had been dark nooks and corners, sharp-edged service hatches and ventilation ducks, crawlspaces and canalisation in which to hide and into which to vanish when things got too hot. _Everything_ here was whitewashed, made the same, bright and clean and tended, but abhorrently artificial, surreal. They passed a couple on an evening walk, not meeting their eyes as the Losteanar custom demanded, but Vila still noted the stilted way in which her hand was resting on his arm, the lack of any kind of emotional echo from either of them, the thin smile and the empty, haughty glance. Keeping a lid on his fear and his arms by his side, even though he wanted to grasp Avon’s sleeve just to make sure he was still there, Vila snuck a glance at his companion. Avon, if he put his mind to it, Vila noted, could have been a consummate actor. Perhaps it was because Avon practiced every hour of the day, like Vila did, but Vila’s persona wasn’t so easily shed – he was sure the panic in his eyes alone would give him away. Avon had slipped right into the empty shell of a Losteanar, lips curled into a smile that was about as friendly and meaningless as a one-credit chip in a casino win. Swallowing hard, Vila tried to force his lips into the same shallow smile, and kept by Avon’s side as they walked right past the suspected building, and into another narrower road running along its side.

There were no guards that Vila’s trained eye had been able to spot, and he hadn’t seen any overt security cameras, which didn’t mean they weren’t there. There were plenty of ways to trip up intruders and thieves that weren’t visible, or that could be very well hidden, even in the sheer cleanness of this place. Walking in through the front door was out of the question. Even if the building should turn out to be nothing at all, who knew how many societal rules they would break simply by entering the building uninvited.

At least Avon’s fake smile had dropped as soon as they had stepped into the alley, and he was frowning. “Thoughts?”

“Doesn’t look like much, but it’s supposed to be a covert facility. Could be booby- trapped from top to bottom.”

Avon glanced around, noting, just as Vila had, the lack of windows on the buildings on the other side of the road. There was a window set into the building in question further down the alleyway, leading into the supposed Federation facility – just within reach if they worked together.

“My thoughts exactly,” Avon said, settling his grim gaze on the window. “Shall we?”

 “I don’t suppose we could just call up the _Liberator_ and tell Blake that there’s nothing here? No, I didn’t think so.”

“Don’t you always claim you can get into anything? Now is your chance to prove it.”

“Alright, let’s get it over with. Give us a leg up?”

Vila could probably have climbed the window sill without Avon’s help, but with it, he was able to hang onto the ledge and risk a peek without pulling himself completely onto it. “Empty hallway,” he reported to Avon, then pulled himself up, pressing himself against the frame and assessing the situation. It wasn’t the most stable of perches, but Vila had had worse. Beyond the window, he could see an unremarkable stretch of hallway. No overt observation devices here either, but more than a snap catch on the window. Vila had no idea how paranoid the Losteana were about security – surely, with anyone who put so much as a toe out of line executed, there wasn’t much of a crime rate – but at least it was a bit of a challenge. Vila dug out his tools, carefully selecting a thin probe. “This won’t take long.”

Avon nodded and turned his back, watching the alleyway.

Vila applied his probe to the lock, feeling a brief rush of excitement and satisfaction when it snapped open and he could push the window to the side. Panic doused his contentment at a job well done quickly enough, and he cast a cursory glance inside and up, trying to spot any additional light barriers that would set off an alarm. Spotting none, he slid inside and reached his hand down for Avon. “All empty.”

“Surely not,” Avon said, as he scrambled through the window after Vila, and they stood in the corridor side by side.

Vila leant back to pull the window shut behind them. “What now?”

“Find the room that is best protected – or failing that, a computer terminal where I can call up the blueprints.”

 

“You’d think there’d be guards,” Vila remarked as they were carefully patting down the corridor, and then the next, and the next.

“What for? The population is hardly likely to interfere, and any foreigner will be executed on sight.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you have this particularly charming way to make your points, Avon?”

There was an amused spark in Avon’s eyes for just a second, then he held up a finger to his lips – and Vila heard it, too. Synchronous steps, coming closer, and nowhere to hide in the too-clean corridors. Heart in his throat, Vila raised the arm with the bracelet, but Avon’s hand shot out and stopped him.

“No! They might not come this way, and we might be able to follow them.”

“This is foolish!” Vila was sure that Avon knew as well as he did that the steps could only be coming this way, and they were nearly upon them now. His flight instinct was screaming.

“Let’s test our disguise, shall we,” Avon whispered, under his breath, and straightened his back, meaningless smile falling back into place.

Heart racing, Vila followed suit just as the men rounded the corner.

There were two of them, burly men, not in the usual uniform of Federation troopers, but the Federation insignia pinned clearly to the lapel of their Losteanar shirts, and nasty blasters slung about their waists. The insincere smile was absent from their faces – off-worlders, like themselves. Clearly, the Federation was doing _something_ in the building, then, and with the tolerance of the Losteana.

Of course, the troopers spotted Avon and Vila immediately.

“You, technician,” one of them barked at Vila, a dark, dangerous scowl on his face, “what are you doing out here with one of the cleaning staff?”

Under other circumstances, Vila would have laughed. Now, feeling Avon tense, he saw a desperate chance and took it. Plastering an affable smile to his face and forcing a polite, professional distance into his expression, he gripped Avon’s elbow, and said, in his best Alpha: “I have never seen him on the cleaning staff. I was out here, walking off some thoughts, and found him, fiddling with the window back there. He claims he was ordered to clean it. I was about to take him back to make sure he is one of the staff.” Perhaps he was behaving nowhere near normally for a Losteana, but Vila hoped, furiously, that it would fool the off-world trooper.

Avon had gone unmovable as a rock, fury burning in his eyes, even where the fake smile shivered and held. Vila prayed that Avon could tell what Vila was doing, that he could _trust_ Vila, just this far.

“Very well,” the trooper said, casting a disgusted glance at Avon, “I’ll accompany you.” To his companion: “Check that window.”

“After you,” Vila offered politely, and the trooper pulled Avon roughly from his hold with a disgusted grimace. He marched on ahead, dragging Avon along with him.

Vila caught a dark glance directed his way from Avon as he hurried to keep up, but Avon was keeping his silence. It was working, at any rate – the trooper was leading them right into the core of the building, past security doors and more guards, cameras and alarms, a maze that would be hell to get back out of if they needed to, but Vila was praying the teleport wouldn’t let them down. He didn’t usually like to rely on luck this much – it had a habit of letting you down at the most inappropriate moments – but desperate times called for desperate measures.

  Suddenly, the trooper stopped at a door. “I will take care of checking the records. Get back to work.”

Vila’s smile almost died a cruel death buried under his fear. He couldn’t be separated from Avon! But there was no way out now without breaking their cover, and there was a security camera trained right on them –Vila could see it blinking out of the corner of his eye. “Of course,” he said, hoping his voice didn’t shake, hoping the smile held firm, hoping his eyes showed none of the terror he felt.

Not daring to wait until the trooper yanked Avon further down the corridor to see where he was taking him, Vila let himself into the room. To his relief, that the door required no code, and Vila was even more consoled when he found a computer lab behind the door. The lab was as good as deserted, banks of computer terminals standing in clean, orderly rows, the air stale from the machines. There was one Losteana working at the front console, but in accordance with the local custom, he didn’t acknowledge Vila’s entry.

Vila thought briefly of calling up the _Liberator_ then and there, get them out of this mess – but he was so close now. If only he could access the nearest computer without raising any alarms, he could find out what the Federation were doing in the time it took the trooper to run a check on Avon, delete some files and get them out of there with a job well done.

He slid into a chair, activating the screen, relieved to find the operating system ran in Federation Standard, and began calling up the latest files. Unless he ran into a security check, that wouldn’t raise any suspicion, and as soon as he was done, all he had to do was format the drives – there would be backups somewhere, there always were, but perhaps, just perhaps, Vila could set the research back for a little while.

At first, he had no idea what he was looking at, wishing that Avon were by his side – hoping that Avon was alright. If Avon got killed because Vila had decided to play the hero, Blake would kill _him_. Never mind that, Vila wouldn’t dare show his face back on the _Liberator_. There was a reason he had never worked with a partner; Vila wasn’t callous enough. He wasn’t like Avon; he couldn’t abandon a friend, couldn’t leave them to their fate even if it got both of them caught or maimed or killed. Or perhaps that wasn’t like Avon at all.

Finally, Vila found something he could understand – technical specifications of some sort, chemical formulae intermixed with a technical construct, a gun, perhaps, or a deployment mechanism of some drug, as if the Federation didn’t already have enough of those. Well, it certainly wouldn’t do any harm if Vila messed with their files a bit.

Avon could certainly have done a better job – he might even have really understood what the Federation were developing here, he might have been able to crash their entire system, get rid of every piece of code input into the computer banks – but Vila’s speciality were locks, not computers. He would do what he could.

It was then that the alarm started blaring. The Losteana at the other console looked up, rose calmly and walked out, never even glancing at Vila. Vila hastily deleted the files he was looking at, before calling up a schematic of the building – the staff registrar was just down the corridor. High time to find Avon and get out of here.

Vila jogged down the corridor, throwing caution into the wind in favour of urgency. Employees were passing him, all Losteana, all blank-faced and calm, and all politely sidestepping and ignoring him. They were all going the other way. Vila’s skin began to itch with unease – _danger_ , his instincts said, _get out of there_! But he couldn’t, not before he’d found Avon and made sure he still had his teleport bracelet. It wouldn’t do to call for teleport and bring a Federation trooper on board with him. Besides, if Blake listened to Avon for once, there would be no rescue mission if Avon got left behind.

Vila rounded the corner – and ran straight into the reason for the alarm. Smoke billowing thick and heavy from a doorway. Vila skidded to a spot, unsure what to do. He couldn’t see a thing past the doorway; there was no getting through there until the ventilation system had cleared the smoke – and by the time that had happened, the place would be swarming with troopers. Vila imagined he could hear them now, heavy boots falling onto hard floors.

Then, his name, more of a croak than anything else, and Vila turned, and spotted it – the only niche in the whole forsaken building, just above eyelevel. There were two steps in the wall leading to it so it was probably a maintenance shaft, and Avon sat curled up in it like spectre, covered in blood and soot.

Vila pulled himself up, squeezing in to crouch before Avon. It was a tight fit, Avon’s knee digging into his shin, and their faces inches from each other. “Are you alright?” Of course Avon wasn’t. There was a lot of blood coming from his hairline and some from a burst vessel in his left eye – head wounds always bled that much, didn’t they? Nothing to get worried about, was it? Avon coughed shallowly, expelling some blood from his split lip. He shifted, his boot ramming against Vila’s ankle.

“Where does it hurt?” Vila asked urgently, unable to stop himself – as if, in the state Avon was in, it wouldn’t hurt everywhere. Vila was afraid to touch him, hand hovering uselessly over Avon’s arm. At least, he would be able to catch him if Avon lost consciousness and started listing sideways out of the little nook.

To his surprise, Avon’s lips shifted into a smile – a tiny thing, but made sincere by the corresponding spark in his eyes – the good one, anyway. The other, Vila didn’t feel much like looking at. “Why are you still here? Surely _you_ don’t suffer from Blake’s hero complex?”

“Couldn’t leave you behind, could I? You’d never let me live it down.”

“Alright,” Avon said, softly, still smiling.

Vila tore his gaze away. “What happened?”

“The trooper got a bit overenthusiastic. His blaster blew. I thought it better to hide before his friends arrived, but I think they’ll be a while yet.” Avon shifted again, and immediately grimaced. “Did you find a computer?”

“A whole bank of them.”

“Then let’s go.”

“Avon, you’re bleeding all over the floor! Reinforcements are probably on the way now! I deleted some files already; let’s get out of here.”

“If you think I let myself be beat to a pulp by a Federation grunt for some _deleted files_ -” Avon cut himself off, closing his eyes for a moment. The left one was quickly purpling, developing an ugly swelling.

Swallowing hard, Vila gave in. He just didn’t want to argue, he told himself, not when Avon looked so bedraggled. Avon wasn’t pleasant to argue with when he was feeling well, Vila didn’t want to find out what it would be like when he wasn’t. It had nothing to do with conceding Avon’s point. Throwing caution in the wind like that – that would have been insanity.

Avon could walk just fine, it turned out, though he swayed a bit, and when he finally sat down at one of the computer terminals, his hands were shaking quite badly. “What is it they are doing?”

“I only had a moment to look before the alarm went off. Some new deployment for a drug, I think.”

“As if they didn’t have a wealth of those already,” Avon said, echoing Vila’s earlier thoughts. Vila didn’t think that Avon, being an Alpha, had had personal experience with half of the drugs the Federation unleashed on the population, but then the Federation always reserved the nastiest things for criminals and prisoners. An Alpha fallen from grace must have been like a present for the sadistic interrogators, even if Avon did nothing to provoke them. From the state he’d been in when Vila had first seen him in the holding cell, Avon had done _everything_ to provoke them.

Now, Avon was frowning at some files on the screen, then visibly tore himself away. “Alright, no time to browse. Blake will have to be satisfied with the knowledge that we set their research back a bit, and perhaps made this location unviable for a secret development site.” Avon slid bloodstained fingers under his vest and pulled something out of his tool case – a small data cube.

“A virus,” Vila guessed.

“Yes – nothing too spectacular, I fear, but it will have to do.” Avon typed in some code, getting the computer network to take the new file, and hid it behind an encryption – something Vila recognised well – to keep the virus from being detected immediately. Then, he picked up the data cube and turned back to Vila, fatigue suddenly shining in his eyes. “Now get us out of here.”

Vila didn’t waste a moment to call for teleport.

 

When they shimmered into existence on the _Liberator_ , Cally was operating the console and Blake took a step towards them with a horrified expression at the sight of the blood. “What happened!?”

Avon, despite his swollen eye, managed to summon up an impressive glare. “What did you expect from sending us into a secret Federation facility?”

“Avon, you should be in the surgical unit,” Cally cut in, sliding out from behind the console.

Vila slipped off his teleport bracelet, accepting the one Avon held out to him even as he was still glaring at Blake. Vila felt far too tired to be angry. Now that he had no reason to be afraid, at least until Blake decided on his next heist, Vila’s heart was struggling to fall back into its normal rhythm. His pulse was still rushing in his ears, and the adrenaline was wearing off. He could feel Avon swaying by his side. A glass of something sweet and calming would go down a treat just now, Vila thought, and wondered if Avon shared that sentiment.

“So the facility _was_ there,” Blake said, stubborn as usual.

“It _was_. Now, if you excuse Vila and me, Blake – I fear you’re giving me a headache.”

Blake acquiesced and stepped back to allow Cally to fuss over Avon. Vila, not wanting to remain with Blake – nice of Avon to include him –, trailed them to the surgical unit, and sat by the side while Cally examined Avon’s head wound.

Vila didn’t particularly care for the surgical unit – it was nice enough, as far as these things went, but anything that remotely evoked a sense of hospitals had a negative connotation in his book. There were no proper hospitals in the Delta sectors, of course – just places to get more drugs, and, if you were lucky, you survived the visit. The closest thing he had seen to proper hospitals until he had broken into one were the correctional facilities. The Federations’ psychomanipulators liked it clean and sterile. This, now, at least, was the _Liberator_ , so there was always a bit of clutter. Tissue regenerators they hadn’t put back quite correctly, a blanket here, a pillow there, stray bits of circuitry, grey walls broken in niches and columns and nooks and all those little comfortable, shadowy places.

“There is no concussion. You were very lucky,” Cally said to Avon, who had exchanged the blood-splattered pseudo-Losteanar shirt for one of his own and was reclining into a seat, keeping his eyes shut. Vila was hanging onto his shirt for now – it really wasn’t too uncomfortable, even if there were a few splatters of blood on the sleeve now, and the inner pocket was really quite handy for keeping his tools. Besides, Vila didn’t really want to head off into the quietness of his room. He’d always needed to be around people when a theft hadn’t gone quite according to plan. It reassured him that some things were still the same they had been before he’d left.

Cally had fixed Avon’s lip and wiped away all the blood, but even without it, the bruise looked impressive, running down the entire left side of Avon’s face. Cally was working on it with the regenerator, but the device had its limitations. Avon would probably be walking around with a shiner for a few days – and Vila found that he found the idea much less funny than he thought. After all, _he_ had got Avon into the mess in the first place.

“I don’t plan to be around Blake when that luck runs out,” Avon said, folding his arms.

“If it does, you might be,” Vila remarked dryly, wondering if he would still be around when it happened to appreciate the irony. He liked Blake, but at this rate, he might get killed before he could die.

Avon opened his eyes, causing Cally to tut at him, and looked at Vila. “Why are you still here? You weren’t injured, were you?”

“Didn’t feel like being on my own, did I.” Vila hesitated, then took the leap: “Don’t worry, I’m not becoming _irrational_ or anything.”

For a moment, Avon just stared at him, then a slight smile curled his lips and he closed his eyes again, still smiling. “No. You always were.”

Vila wasn’t sure if Cally understood what had passed between them. She _had_ been there when Avon had said it – _I have never understood why it should be necessary to become irrational in order to prove that you care, or, indeed, why it should be necessary to prove it at all._ Vila never knew how much exactly the Auron could sense, even though she claimed that she couldn’t read their minds – but she continued to work in silence, with a small smile of her own. Well, Vila couldn’t read minds either, but he was getting pretty good at reading his Avons, and no, he didn’t have to prove to Avon that he cared. For Avon, Vila was sure, it was pretty much a given that everyone did, and he called them all fools for it. But perhaps it had been necessary to prove to Avon that Vila could be trusted.   

“There.” Cally lowered the regenerator, Avon’s bruise down to a dark ring around his eye. “Now get some rest – both of you. Blake can wait to hear the results tomorrow.”

“Will you tell him that, Cally?” Vila asked, rather hopeful. He wasn’t due for a flight deck shift in a while, and a bit of food, a bit of a drink and a bit of a nap sounded wonderful.

“Would you rather volunteer to debrief Blake, Vila?” Avon said, swinging his legs down from the recliner. He was smiling again, a little thing that didn’t even move his lips much. It didn’t make Vila’s skin crawl, either.

He grinned at Avon. “Are you sure you’re done with him, Cally? I think something might have been shaken loose.”

Cally, bless her, looked utterly puzzled. “Why? Did you notice something I missed?”

“Ignore him. Vila is merely exercising what passes for his sense of humour.” But the smile was still there, and when Vila trailed Avon out of the surgical unit, he dared to hope that the truce had been established, and that, perhaps, his breaks might not be quite so lonely anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I, as always, look forward to hearing how you enjoyed my fic, and of course remember to give the art some love!


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